


always in this twilight

by batyatta (atomicwonderwoman)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, Pining, Post-Break Up, Post-Recall, Post-Zero Hour, Smoking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23229190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomicwonderwoman/pseuds/batyatta
Summary: The footage from Paris reached her eventually. She watched it in her suite in Oasis once she was done with her work for the day. Late at night, a glass of whiskey in hand. Just as she had planned to.It’s not like she didn’t hear about what happened. Null sector attacked. The new Overwatch showed up.Mercy showed up.
Relationships: Moira O'Deorain/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	always in this twilight

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, it's been a while. Anyway, as I arrive months late with Starbucks, here's to how extra Mercy's entrance was in Zero Hour.
> 
> Enjoy!

The footage from Paris reached her eventually. She watched it in her suite in Oasis once she was done with her work for the day. Late at night, a glass of whiskey in hand. Just as she had planned to. 

It’s not like she didn’t hear about what happened. Null sector attacked. The new Overwatch showed up. 

Mercy showed up. 

Moira poured herself another drink. Started the video. It was in good quality, everything was sharp and she could navigate the camera freely. Only the best, courtesy of Talon. 

She watched with mild interest how the monkey and his friends got beaten until the tides turned with Shimada appearing first, then the old knight and his squire. That annoying omnic. Boring. 

Finally, she made an entrance. And what an entrance it was. Like a fucking angel descending on her wings, ready to save them all, like she always did. All bright and shiny, a ray of light on an already sunny day, a challenge to the sun. 

She emptied her glass in one sip, savoring the burn.

There were sightings in Cairo a few weeks back. She saw the pictures, saw the damage to her suit. She had it fixed, turns out. She got back into the heroics, despite everything she used to say. All of her doubts whispered late at night disappeared when the time came. She wondered if anything she said back then was true. She wondered what was the thing that got her to join the new Overwatch. She wondered why she still bothered thinking about matters long overdue. 

Moira sneered. She had no right but she was still angry. Betrayed, her mind supplied, but she silenced that part of her brain immediately. Angela was not made to be fighting in the front lines but there were things that could persuade her. Like her misplaced sense of duty. Her morals. _Ethics._

The same morals that had her reject the offer to work here in Oasis, one of the few places that wouldn’t look down on her for working with Overwatch. Quite the opposite, actually. Where she’d be embraced and supplied with everything she needed to make new groundbreaking breakthroughs. Where nothing would limit her potential. With her.

She didn’t reject her that time, she had to remind herself, over and over again. She rejected the offer. Might as well have rejected her, had she tried anything. Still, her personal rejection came much earlier and it was much more dramatic than that. Some days it hurt. Other times, it filled her with the same anger it did the first time around.

One that had her refill the glass again and again as she kept rewinding the video to the moment Angela descended. When she healed that other woman. She was not jealous. This was nothing like them. 

But she did bend down to her, looked at that woman with concern. Touched her. 

Only, she knew intimately how Angela's hands felt wrapped around her forearm when she was hurt. How different it was when she started to care more. The tiny frown which appeared on her face when she focused. How her hands would tighten if it was a more serious injury. The warmth that biotics brought that had nothing on the feeling of Angela's fingers between her own on the battlefield. Angela's voice whispering to her to hold on, that everything would be alright. How she believed her, if only for a moment, despite her own dizziness and Ziegler’s white-knuckled grip on her Caduceus staff. 

Trust never came easy to her but Ziegler had a way of making her do things she wouldn't ordinarily do.

It didn't matter in the end.

She wasn't jealous, that would be admitting that she cared too much. That her feelings were of any significance. She was just disappointed. Angela could be doing everything she wanted, could be changing the world, yet she chose first Overwatch then her misguided idea of atonement. So much potential wasted. 

She caught herself before she threw the glass across the room. No need to destroy a perfectly fine glass.

Another drink. She didn’t drink a lot but there were times like today. She had enough foresight to make preparations so that she would not have to show up at the lab tomorrow. 

It’s not like the attack was an accident.

With a sigh, she put her holopad away. There were only so many times she could watch the same thing over and over again, even inebriated. She lifted herself from the armchair, wrapped her shawl tighter around her arms. The nights in the desert were still chilly, despite Oasis' excellent weather altering technology. She could still stand straight, which was a relief. She walked over to her wardrobe, steps a little unsteady. She found the coat she was looking for, the same one she wore when she last met Angela to make her the offer to stay here, at Oasis. With her.

In the pocket was a pack of cigarettes, menthols for a change. It's been a long time, years since she last had to resort to smoking. Blame it on Ziegler. She was the one to join that merry band of dropouts with no place to go. Fucking idealists. 

She went to her balcony and lit the first cigarette stick, her glass with whiskey close. She wasn't naive enough to think it would end up with just one, not with the emotions raging inside her. Not with the approaching wave of sadness. She would need something to take the edge off, to mellow everything out.

And if smoking reminds her of Ziegler, well. Her situation on that front was already dire. 

Another sip. Her glass was empty so she refilled it, feeling the approaching end of her tolerance. A few more and she'd end up with a poisoning. Was it really what she was doing? Was she so pathetic to get herself poisoned because she saw her ex-lover with her merry band of misfits?

Or was it because, if she closed her eyes, she could see Angela right next to her, with a cigarette dangling from her fingers, either exhausted and barely seeing or agitated, talking and gesticulating wildly. Could imagine taking that cigarette away, taking a drag and leaving it behind. Could see herself kissing Ziegler like she did so many times. Imagine the exact weight of her armor and how the bodysuit she wore underneath felt under her fingers. How hard it was to take it off. 

How soft her stare was when she was so tired, how malleable she became. How fragile she was in those moments, how careful she was not to break her. A woman like Ziegler, breakable. She’d scoff at the idea but she’d seen it with her own eyes and couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t ignore how it made her feel. 

A little more and she could probably even believe that she was there. Taste her lips and feel her breath against her neck. Wrap her arms and hold her just to keep her close and never let go. As if she was ever capable of keeping her.

As if she could ever be enough for Angela Ziegler, always trying to save the world.

She stomped on the cigarette butt to put it out, like she used to do when she was much younger, back in Dublin. When life was easier and all that mattered was the next exam, her research projects and staying on top of her class. 

She lit another one, trying not to think too hard on the fact that she was soon going to run out of them. That she would have to toss away another one of her few mementos of her time with Angela.

They were growing more and more scarce these days. Even the technology she stole from her was now more Moira's than hers. She left most behind when she was kicked out of Blackwatch, lost some others on the move. Oasis was her first semblance of home since she had left Ireland but comfortable as it might be, she doubted she would ever feel completely at home there. 

Not like she did when she was with Ziegler.

Bullshit sentiments. 

Alas, her bottle was nearly empty, her cigarette was burned to the filter. She looked at the night sky once more, closed her eyes and let herself feel the cool wind. Then she turned away, went back inside, tucked the pack away in that coat, drank the last of her whiskey straight out of the bottle and threw it away. 

A little hazy, she went to the shower, undressing on the way, decidedly not thinking of the times when she stumbled drunk with Angela in tow, times when they had to sneak into medical to patch each other up. It was all so idyllic that she doubted everything happened the way it played out in her head but it didn't matter at the moment. 

At the moment the illusion was enough.

Showered, she went to bed, checked her holopad one more time. There were some messages from the Talon council, ones she ignored for the moment, too busy looking for one specific contact, the letters blurry. She found it, at the bottom of the list. Opened the chat window, typed out her message. Hesitated and ultimately deleted it.

It wouldn't change a thing anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading it, if you liked please leave kudos or a comment it fuels me just as much as coffee if not more <3
> 
> I'm on twitter as [batyatta](http://twitter.com/batyatta)


End file.
